I don't like to go into any spoilers with reviews but I recognize that there are people out there who like to have spoilers. I understand this as there are some things that I vehemently disagree with receiving spoilers for and other things that I do need spoilers for. So I think I'm going to be breaking this up into two different sections. And I'll update when I find out when the book is getting published.
Full Disclosure: I received a beta copy of this novel from the author in exchange for my review, which will be as honest as I can make it.
Okay, so. Beginning with the spoiler free review, which will be drier than the spoilery one. Fair warning for that. At the end of this section will be the explanation of the rating. In blue!! Also, an explanation about why I recommend it to be read and to whom. Yay!
So what is the plot? There is a war in the fey world and a mortal girl gets dragged into it by a fey prince. This is a romance novel with overtones of that war. I'm sure that will be involved in the summary on the back of the book so without knowing what the summary will be, that is more or less all I can say about it. BUT I WILL SAY THAT THERE IS A HAPPY ENDING AND IT SETS ITSELF UP FOR A SEQUEL. Y'all, I like my happy endings.
I enjoyed the story. It had a pretty solid beginning and a pretty solid ending. The middle had some sagging but that's not unusual, especially for a debut novel. There were a couple of plot points that were less connected than I'd have liked them to be but most of them managed to at least partially get folded back into the story that by the end, I wasn't too bothered by them.
There were some characters that I had strong, extremely strong, feelings toward, not all of them positive feelings, which is for the most part good. (As a side note, I like feeling conflicting things about characters; like, I love them but I also want to punch them in the face. Many of my favorite characters over the years have fallen into that category). I like that several of the leading characters were involved in those very strong feelings. I wish that I could have felt more strongly about the leading POV character but I had strong enough feelings for the characters around that one that my feelings occasionally spilled over into strong feelings for the leading POV character.
This book has multiple POVs, and, while I wish that some of the POVs for certain events had been different, the author did a pretty good job of not only clearly differentiating between them, but also preventing POV bleed.
There are two stories that A Call of Bones most strongly reminded me of: Beauty and the Beast, which is a pretty classic tale that has been adapted thousands of times, and the manga/anime Vampire Knight. If you like either of these two things, you will probably like this book. It also reminds of the song Tir na nOg, the version of which I know by Celtic Woman, though I'm almost positive that it's because of the fey world thing. It takes place more or less in Tir na nOg. The lack of accents on that is making me itch a little but whatever.
If this were a movie it would have to be rated R for language and, as written, sexual content, but PG-13 for the violence and gore. So keep this in mind if you're looking to read it.
Rating: 3.5/5 stars
One of my professors in college brought up the point that A's should be for things that are beyond expectation. C's are what you should expect because that means you learned the material satisfactorily. I would give this a book a C for the same reason that I would give that score to Vampire Knight (which I will get into in the spoilery section). As I said, it had a good, solid beginning and a good, solid ending, which is excellent. I absolutely loved several characters. The different locales felt different. The action was pretty decent, although I've been somewhat spoiled in the books I've read recently in that regard. I actually laughed out loud several times, which is impressive. This book just didn't wow me. But. There is enough potential in there that I can recognize that if you were more interested in romance novels than I am that you would be a lot more invested and probably rate it much higher. I like my romances to be the undertones of a story, not the front and center plot. So, if you like romances of this type, I highly recommend it. If you're looking for a story with solid worldbuilding and characterization, I recommend it. If nothing else, for the most part, this book feels, to me, of the same vein as cozy mysteries, just of the fey romance variety. To put it into different terms, this book is the equivalent of comfort food fare. Also, I just realized that I'm not entirely sure what the title has to do with the story but it sure sounds good.
Now for the spoilers!! Read at your own risk!
I'm going to put an extra couple of lines in here just to make sure that there is going to be a buffer between the non-spoilers and the spoilers.
I'm assuming if you're reading this sentence that you are fine with the spoilers. So I'm going to begin with something tamer to give the non-spoiler reader a chance to bow out. For the non-spoiler reader, come back to this after you've read the book so that you can also respond and tell me I'm wrong for my responses. Just some spoilers and emotions here beyond this point. Okay?
My two favorite people, the ones that ended up at the top of my faves list, were Cirun and Samael. A dangerous place to be since most of them end up dead, actually evil, or betrayers/end up evil. Yeah, I choose my faves well. But they join a pretty illustrious list of characters so they should feel honored by this. And so should the author. I actually cannot use words to describe how much I love Cirun. And Samael makes me so soft inside, which leads me to my next point which is Vampire Knight.
So, Vampire Knight has a "love triangle" with the fabulous Zero and the Main Girl (whose name I can never remember) and the Lord Vampire Dick. Can you tell who is my favorite character from the main characters? Yeah. I'm not subtle. There was a point in Vampire Knight where I almost quit watching it because of how much I absolutely HATED Lord Vampire Dick and Main Girl didn't catch almost any of the red flags he was throwing off. Which is part of the reason why I would give that show a C. I can deal with characters that I hate, but also respect and/or like at the same time. But holy crap, I cannot deal with characters I don't even want to punch in the face, I dislike so much. And there is a character in this book that I hate as much as Lord Vampire Dick in this book. I'm not going to drop any names here because I still want you guys to read it without knowing EVERYTHING. I'll be reading it again after the book officially comes out because I genuinely want to know how this character is in he final product and knowing how much I hate this character will make it easier to deal with it. So if there is a character giving you massive red flags, I'mma just say "It's totally okay." 😊😌 I mentioned that there is a happy ending, right? That character has the reveal and everything gets better after that. My sense of justice is satisfied, more or less, by the end of the book.
Most of the supporting cast I liked though. So while I had intensely strong feelings of hatred for that character, most of the characters I liked. Some of them I liked a whole lot. Some of them weren't around long enough for me to like more than "I like this guy".
I am legit concerned if you have a certain ship after reading A Call of Bones. Because bruh.
I genuinely enjoyed the scenes in the Library and they made me want to go there. The funny thing is that the Library is probably the safest place visited by the characters. More or less. You'll understand why this is so funny after you read the book. Upon further thought, the Library is probably the second safest place visited.
Speaking of libraries, you know how I mentioned Beauty and the Beast?
I'm not going into more detail. Because I want things to be left for discovery. But I do recommend this book, especially if you're into those fey romance novels. Boom.
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